Bibliographies
What goes in one, how it differs from a footnote, and why cases and legislation are split by country.
A bibliography lists every source you used in preparing the piece, whether or not it ended up in a footnote (Appendix 7).
It is not a list of your footnotes. Two things change.
What changes from the footnote
A bibliography entry points at the source, not at a passage in it.
- Every pinpoint is dropped.
- Country identifiers are dropped, because the entries are already grouped by country. A federal identifier such as (NSW) stays, because the heading does not carry it.
- The full stop at the end goes, on entries that are not sentences.
The sections, in order
Primary material comes first. Appendix 7 sets out this order, and says plainly that it is an example rather than a fixed scheme, so a piece on a narrow subject may want a different one.
- Cases
- Legislation
- Treaties
- Books and Chapters in Books
- Journal Articles
- Parliamentary and Government Materials
- Reports
- Dissertations
- Internet Resources
- Other Resources
Sections are lettered A, B, C and so on. A section with nothing in it is left out.
Cases and legislation are divided by jurisdiction
This is the part with no Australian equivalent. Inside the Cases section and the Legislation section, entries are grouped by country under numbered sub-headings, with New Zealand first and everything else alphabetical after it.
Within a jurisdiction, cases are alphabetical, and two cases with the same name run oldest first.
Legislation goes statutes, then subordinate legislation, then Bills, each alphabetical.
Pincite does this grouping for you when you copy a project’s bibliography.
Everything else is alphabetical
Other sections sort on the first author’s last name, or on the institution’s name with any leading “the” ignored, or on the first word of the title where there is no author.
Last reviewed 6 August 2026